A Day Is Not Done Till It Is FIlled With Words
poetry, poems, pomesThe Poetguru Podcast

I think more and more about reality, in all its incarnations and levels, as a series of bubbles. Two teenagers hop into a rusted out clunker of a car and crank up a stereo worth more than the value of the rest of the car. While they ride, feet up on the dashboard, rhythm mimicked...

Huh. A second album. Let’s see what else you had to record in the back of the bin. What else you have to say. Go We start at a thousand miles, the pace of a band that has been touring, the pace of light posts passing over a car, a bus, below planes, carrying electricity...

For a day, or an hour, or the length of a meditation or thought experiment, eliminate the use and concept of I. I, as in, the inclusive actor in the story. i, as in, the little naked monkey with a disconnected head. And I, the formally dressed; top hat and heels. Think, instead, of the...

I am fascinated by a band’s first album. This is before everyone knows their name. While they can still get in a van and stop at a gas station and eat at a diner and not be huge. This is before they are as good as they one day will be. These are the songs...

I am not an audiophile. I’ve never been cool. So let’s keep this simple. 1. I am listening to the ten studio albums that Pearl Jam has released over the last 25 years. I am ignoring all the iterations and live versions that are available. I am ignoring everybody’s solo careers, work with other bands,...

Twenty-five years ago this month, by fate and by coincidence, a series of blessings were laid out before me. Me, the odd child out of every clique in high school, left for college and found the greatest gift any weirdo could hope for, a group of fellow oddities scared and afraid and honest and frightened...

http://www.podbean.com/media/player/audio/postId/6449486?url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesecondarrrow.podbean.com%2Fe%2Fepisode-10-interaction%2F%3Ftoken%3Dfb0893e6f43f80d86795291b3dc158ac&skin=1&download=1&share=1&auto=0&fonts=Helvetica The final episode of season one. Interaction.(image)

I think we can all agree (of course we can’t, but let me dream) that a fair and economically just society would look something like this: Where work is considered the time, energy, creativity, brain and body power that you emit each day in order to create something meaningful for society. In exchange you get...

http://www.podbean.com/media/player/audio/postId/6364156?url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesecondarrrow.podbean.com%2Fe%2Fepisode-8-moments%2F%3Ftoken%3Dcfbdc44d2743256a1e346bf44511524d&skin=1&download=1&share=1&auto=0&fonts=Helvetica The first arrow is the one that hits you out of the blue; the accident, the misstep, the karmic thwap. The second arrow is the one you fire at yourself, in order to deepen the wound and teach yourself a lesson. The first arrow is painful. The second arrow is suffering.(image)

http://www.podbean.com/media/player/audio/postId/6360153?url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesecondarrrow.podbean.com%2Fe%2Fepisode-7-matter%2F%3Ftoken%3D5161a17f6f3dd28d3700e27fbbe7565d&skin=1&download=1&share=1&auto=0&fonts=Helvetica The first arrow is the one that hits you out of the blue; the accident, the misstep, the karmic thwap. The second arrow is the one you fire at yourself, in order to deepen the wound and teach yourself a lesson. The first arrow is painful. The second arrow is suffering.(image)

http://www.podbean.com/media/player/audio/postId/6360152?url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesecondarrrow.podbean.com%2Fe%2Fepisode-1-herenow%2F%3Ftoken%3D9d98fd675a6133113efb8c5ea52ecf77&skin=1&download=1&share=1&auto=0&fonts=Helvetica The first arrow is the one that hits you out of the blue; the accident, the misstep, the karmic thwap. The second arrow is the one you fire at yourself, in order to deepen the wound and teach yourself a lesson. The first arrow is painful. The second arrow is suffering.(image)

http://www.podbean.com/media/player/audio/postId/6357352?url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesecondarrrow.podbean.com%2Fe%2Fepisode-6-kind%2F%3Ftoken%3D5cae934877747a78c840bb7336a129fe&skin=1&download=1&share=1&auto=0&fonts=Helvetica The first arrow is the one that hits you out of the blue; the accident, the misstep, the karmic thwap. The second arrow is the one you fire at yourself, in order to deepen the wound and teach yourself a lesson. The first arrow is painful. The second arrow is suffering.(image)

http://www.podbean.com/media/player/audio/postId/6354110?url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesecondarrrow.podbean.com%2Fe%2Fepisode-5-taste%2F%3Ftoken%3D0fac2d1f3729fcc5deb4aace0cf81cab&skin=1&download=1&share=1&auto=0&fonts=Helvetica The first arrow is the one that hits you out of the blue; the accident, the misstep, the karmic thwap. The second arrow is the one you fire at yourself, in order to deepen the wound and teach yourself a lesson. The first arrow is painful. The second arrow is suffering.(image)

http://www.podbean.com/media/player/audio/postId/6350555?url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesecondarrrow.podbean.com%2Fe%2Fepisode-4-choice%2F%3Ftoken%3D98d807f257ecd601a7b7171921fe3b31&skin=1&download=1&share=1&auto=0&fonts=Helvetica The first arrow is the one that hits you out of the blue; the accident, the misstep, the karmic thwap. The second arrow is the one you fire at yourself, in order to deepen the wound and teach yourself a lesson. The first arrow is painful. The second arrow is suffering.(image)

https://www.podbean.com/media/player/iqr79-60c686?from=yiiadmin The first arrow is the one that hits you out of the blue; the accident, the misstep, the karmic thwap. The second arrow is the one you fire at yourself, in order to deepen the wound and teach yourself a lesson. The first arrow is painful. The second arrow is suffering.(image)

I notice the weight of the blanket on my legs. The tightness of my shorts. The feeling of one hand weighing on top of the other on top of my chest. I notice what appears to be light around the left edge of my closed eyes. What they tell me are floaters. Luminous squares that...

“There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, “What...

I wander downstairs in my white blousey shirt sleeves stretched in all directions from twisting in sleepless sheets. I sit on the floor surrounded by silent voices on the page as I struggle to free my wonder… who said a line and in what verse? Rumi? Doty? The line spoke to what it means to...

-for Dayko The bodies like bombs that fell in the city of Ibarra were exalted to hear the pawing scrape of nails, the long tongue dragging along rubble, the bay and the yap which called fireman to rescue. Seven lives by that four year old body. Seven. God’s number. Sins and virtues. Psalms and parables....

I have met you in chunks, like clones that march endlessly around corners, blocking every escape. I have seen you in your archetypes, each calling back to their kin, a victim of initial, impulse, and name. Chris. Spending your life as a suggestion of the Christ, consumed with the need to be top, first in...

It’s happened. We were informed, since the day we were born first children of single parent, divorce, abortion, contraception. First children of AIDs, heroine, just say no… experimental. We were told by our diminished numbers in a bureaucracy that our children and parents would split the spoils. And so… one more election where baby boomers...

The food on my table has no label, no name of the founders who traided with the natives when they had no word yet for ownership. No snappy slogan etched in cardboard in order to convey health despite the fact we know it’s meal and sugar. But I know a hand must have tilled the...

In Six Flags America children under two get in free, so if they ask you do not tell them that you are three. In Six Flags America you must be 38 inches to ride, so stuff a sock in your sneakers to make you that high. In Six Flags America you can get free soda...

Each year it’s as if our position in revolution or the tilt of our axis causes all of us to slip off our cusp, to blow up or gun down, overdose or fall asleep in jeopardy, never again to wake. Something about the movement of Spring stubbornly into Summer, of Prince into a sarcophagus, of...

-based on The U.S. Poet Laureate episode of The West Wing In Banja Luka a father leads his son to the shores of the Sava River for an afternoon spent listening to the water, like life and time, passing. He teaches his son to cast his metal out into the moving current and to wait...

At the end of the marathon everyone’s legs are gone. Most just want to rest, stripped of their grievances, humanity, civilization. Glycogen stores depleted. But there were emergency vehicles, and screaming. Confusion and heat. Shards of metal from barricades meant to keep the runners from their loved ones. Safe. At the end of the marathon...

What question has you that the Gods might answer? The one about right choices and your destiny? The one about the lives of your children? About which team to take over the weekend? Immediate deistic intervention into a traffic jam? And which God will you ask? The monotheistic God seems overwhelmed and busy. Imagine being...

On a rainy day in April we twist and turn into Cooperstown where I’m interested only in laying hands on one bust. Kids expect no one in sports to be worth their trust, no one in the upcoming election, no movie star who won’t someday soon be caught in a situation fraught with pride and...

I sit on the toilet and wonder what rhythms might rise up from these pipes to claim me. Left eye whipping around a corner in her Mitsubishi. Patsy Cline each time I board a plane. Jim Morrison in the bath. Jimi in bed. Janis on the floor by the bathroom. My feet on cold tile....

At the Garden ten men take the floor while 10,000 stand in front of seats, dreaming. A hundred more sell popcorn, run the soundboard, wash towels. At two in the afternoon someone wipes the seats, At five someone opens parking. America may highlight the tall and the strong, lavish on talent a jersey and a...

1 The bust of a baby taking a first step or shit, eating strained peas, soap, or cursed words. 2 One could say, in my day, a car was freedom, that we drove west to fuck folks we didn’t yet know. 3 In our 20s we climbed trees, rocks, each other, thought our bull-bare bottoms...

The headline reads, “Steph Curry Redefining Greatness in the Post-Michael Jordan Era” which I complain to my boss would be like A-Rod defining home runs in the post Babe Ruth era or Jágr in the post Gretzky era, Obama in the post-Lincoln era. Humans: post dinosaurs. All that’s left in the house I grew up...

For the third time today the boss refers to her as “hon” and she chooses to stop the meeting for a sec to ask him to quit it. A teacher recognizes the introverts are passing tests, though not participating. Stops class clowns long enough to ask. Sekou Sundiata must type his name over again to...

Out west these days the fences are made of hoods of plastic covering concrete, made to look like wood but never in need of painting. And so Tom Sawyer need not come up with some intricate, conniving idea to feed to his dupes and friends. Instead he’s graduated from the University with a degree in...

A superhero is someone who uses their advantage for the betterment of others. A superhero is someone who uses their ability for the betterment of others. A superhero is someone who uses their strength for the betterment of others. A superhero uses their freak for the advancement of others. There was an incident. A horrible...

At six the kid loved the long lines, the swirling puddles, the intersection of dried color and what she dubbed, “its barking and its funny.” At sixteen she could not be bothered to accompany her old man to the museum where “everything is so dusty and boring.” By twenty-six she’d humor me once a year,...

Henry Hudson never saw the world I was raised in. Railroad tracks over cracked concrete pitted with fresh tar and overflowing, flowers of oversized homes sprung up along the forested shores, weeds of trailers sprung at their feet. No. He doffed his cap and trimmed his sails without the smoke stacks pumping out concrete, the...

April is National Poetry Month – #NaPoMo #30for30 — From the top of Manhattan it appears like a jeweler’s tool, large triangle spikes alternatively piercing the air and the ground, suggesting both a rise and collapse. Across the barricades and signs for “Authorized Vehicles Only” the bottom third is shards of glass stitched together with...

April is National Poetry Month – #NaPoMo #30for30 — In the painting there’s a man on a bridge. Often iconic, either the Brooklyn or San Francisco Bay. From the angle of his head and height of his climb one can tell if he is despondent or reaching the other side. On this canvas a dirt...

April is National Poetry Month – #NaPoMo #30for30 — Wind back through time, through your sculptures of the mind old washed out hues of umber-tinted photos. You, however, can never explain a hairdo, nor flannel, nor cord-tangled tech, nor James Earl Jones welcoming you the same way each time you pick up the phone. Say...

April is National Poetry Month – #NaPoMo #30for30 — I once held a door open for Stockard Channing, a woman who’s never looked less than breathtaking and who in my youth was Grease’s bad girl of high school despite being, already, thirty-four. Whom I’ve never seen do poorly in a movie. Who’s always portrayed a...

April is National Poetry Month – #NaPoMo #30for30 — “All I need is one blunt, one page, one pen, one prayer.” – Nas Back when Nas was Stillmatic and the Fugees ran The Score both used to bitch about not enough mics in the store Virgin Records running profits by limiting shelf space tubes of...

April is National Poetry Month – #NaPoMo #30for30 — There are nights when the sheets that drape me swaddle me like papier-mâché and dry to a stiff cast, the dribble from my mouth a gold mask at the shock that I was King for just that breath past my father’s death. The tour of artifacts...

April is National Poetry Month – #NaPoMo #30for30 — James Brady is dead, though for the last thirty-three years of his life he lived in seesawing disagreement with his body which somedays responded well to access and other days refused to admit the failure of the bullet. James Brady is dead, though for sixty-nine days...

In the visual thesaurus there is a one word jump between being polite and being kind. According to this reference these two words are not synonyms, but they are synonymous. And yet, in real-world function they are worlds apart. The distinction between these two words is the distance between someone who supports Donald Trump’s presidential...

This is a mix for you, my love. It can never be called a playlist, because this is not play. This is serious business, although admittedly a first draft. This is a mix which will be edited and updated as we find new ways to love each other. But the rules, the rules must remain....

This is not an unbiased telling of a story. The filmmakers here have an agenda and a point of view. They are storytellers. That is what they do. All my thoughts flow from what they told. I don’t know how Teresa Halbach died, or what happened to her body after she died. The state did...

The primary debate we are having right now in the presidential nominating process is not about the role of the federal government, nor immigration, nor tax cuts, nor defense spending, nor guns, nor inequity. It is about the history of the United States. Each candidate is trying to win over a debate about our origins,...

A computer is a device that allows you to move your mind, without having to move your body. Yoga allows you to move your body, without having to move your mind. Meditation is a way to move neither your body, nor your mind. Pro Wrestling (dance, theatre) is a way to move your body, in...

You’ve come to the front door of the temple. You’ve found the structure read about in diaries, intuited in dreams, a gold-inlaid shack held up by cracked and weathered planks of wood. It sits on the edge of the known universe, at the point in town where two blocks in one direction is bustling city,...

In order to fall asleep one must disconnect from the body. One must be willing to disconnect from the body. One must feel safe enough, and neutral enough to be prepared to disconnect from the body. Sleep, and consequently dreaming, allows the creative-story-spinning parts of our awareness to move unfettered by laws of causality, and...

I’m not sure how you feel about words. For me, each noun is an opportunity. It’s the act of taking a blank stage and placing a ______ front and center on it for the audience to see. An obelisk, a vase, a small door, a bicycle, a sword, a vial, a folding fan. I am...

I’m not sure how to talk about this. It’s not something you should say often. I hear voices. Not impressions nor ideas, nor urges, voices. Sometimes they come to me with a word, and sometimes a whole line. They do not tell me to do awful things. Heck, they do not tell me to do...

First off, don’t. This is not a book I suggest you buy, or borrow, or download. It’s a book about a cross-country trip taken by a father and his son. It’s a book about the concept of quality. It’s a book about the use of control and lack of creativity in education. It’s a book...

WFM: Allergic to Pine-Sol, Am I the Only One – Melissa Barrett What do you think of found poems, or puzzle poems, or collages? Are they art? Are they poetry? Is it an act of creation to paste together disparate pieces into a new whole? I have this question about mash-ups, and remixes, and remakes,...

Cedars of Lebanon – Derrick Austin I can appreciate a poem that makes ones wonder, one that, at first reading is compelling enough that I want to do a little research to understand it more. This poem starts with a quote from the Song of Songs, which I knew was part of the Bible, but...

This is The IDT, the incredibly depressing tape. This is the mixtape I started making before college in the 80s, that went through revisions with every love and every heartbreak, that was burned to CD, but lost to history when we all went digital. Could I remake it? Should I? The rules are simple: 1....

The first thing I will say about the first poem in this year’s BAP is a heartfelt thanks that it is not by John Ashbery. I have nothing against the Godfather, but too many of the BAPs start with his work, and the autobiography and comment in the back of the book is always the...

Foreword One may confuse the homonyms. Rather than simply being “the words that come first”, one might hear “a look at what’s ahead.” But in The Best American Poetry 2015 the series editor, David Lehman, does not look forward in his foreward. Instead he looks back, first as a critique on himself and his forewords...

I began reading the Best American Poetry anthologies in 1997. It was a gift for my birthday that year. The first few volumes I own have scribbles on each page espousing the quick reaction of a 25, 26, 27… year old me. When I look back I sometimes agree, and sometimes think, “that dumbass didn’t...

“It’s only a choice. No effort. No work. No job. No saving of money. Just a choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your door, buy bigger guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love, instead, see us all as one.” – Bill Hicks...

In my age and frailty. In my anger and hostility. With my political leanings opposed to yours, with my broken soul, armed and unyielding, in my protection. In my manipulations. When you see me on the island of the highway with a sign. When I don’t speak your language. Though I came here avoiding your...

All I ask of a song in it’s few moments inside me is to pry from my rigid musculature a wash of emotion. I do not come to it to be entertained, nor absolved, nor removed, nor distracted. At its end I want to tear up, or to grin knowingly. To suppress a laugh, to...

What happens after you die? Or more to the point, what do you believe happens? What actually will happen will. But, what you believe will tells us something, not about death but about oneself. The clearer question, “What do you hope for in death?” I hope for, what we all hope for, that which we...

You were another outside of me, a voice, a scent, a shape, a body. An aspiration I wished could love me. You did. We lived together closer until your love of me became a skin, an armor against cold and darkness. You loved me in perfect concert. Then seams, cracks in the husk of me,...

(already in progress) Cormack: And I am tired of candidates from the other side of the aisle running down success, and achievement, and wealth. We need more wealthy people in this country, not fewer. And free market capitalism is the way we get there. It is the greatest force for wealth creation in the history...

The first day starts at dawn. Well, just before dawn, as soon as the purple curtain surrenders its battle, as the light illuminates the paste of the ceiling. What’s with us, that we see beginnings in the dead of night, in the dark of the year, in the void of space? The first day is...

The muscles atrophy. The voice that insisted has since moved on, or been placated by some well-written sitcom. The words of other artists are enough. The box has been emptied of all its stuff. But there’s a list somewhere. Ideas that made sense when you were fitter, when you sat down a bit sore to...

If you think what’s wrong with America is other Americans, we have no hope. In America there will always be zealots. There will always be farmers, and jocks, and Ivy League frat boys, and transexual activists, and pencil pushers, and rednecks, and liberal elites, and greedy Wall Street agro edge sorters, and supremacists, and peaceniks,...

You are born at full speed. Falling. Falling at the same rate as your mother. At the same rate as your mother and father and everyone and everything around you. Terminal velocity. Zero acceleration. Nothing to feel. The length of your life, of the life of your family, and your lineage, and your civilization, and...

I am not in competition with a movie for your attention. I am not in competition with a rock star on a bus headed by highway to the venue. I am not in competition with Xbox 360 for the hand-eye coordination of a fourteen year old. Storytelling is not about the dollar, because those who...

I have been operating under a delusion, a delusion driven mainly by ego. By the third grade I thought it was clear that our class was exceptional, at least in the narrative of our school. By third grade we were beating the fifth and sixth graders in sports, in aptitude, on tests. By sixth grade...

There is a world, antithetical to this one. More dangerous. Not just its opposite, its destruction. Its end. Were I to knock off the the spigot of reality, as Aldous Huxley recommended, this other world would flood in. Indeed, it shares our space and our time. And since time, we have glimpsed it. Music, image,...

I’m a good one to have around in a crisis. The systems of shock and flinch instilled in my body are, for some unknown reason, effortlessly time-delayed and easily tamped down. Thrown into the middle of any situation, I can check whatever emotional response I should be having and simply deal with the mechanics at...

It’s not simply that the soul can break off into a thousand pieces, it’s not that it has the potential ability. It does. It breaks. The sea-sauce of which we are made is blended a thousand times over, so much so, that it is impossible to say what is me and what is you. Air,...

Either you believe that people in their hearts are good, that they want to do good work, that they wake up in the morning and choose to do the best they can with the voices and arms and thoughts they have, and if you believe this then you have no problem giving them food when...

“You have a voice speaking to you?” “About me. Accurately, and with a better vocabulary.” – Stranger Than Fiction A student brings a TED talk to class, in which the presenter started hearing a seemingly innocuous voice narrating her life. The voice is nothing more than an annoyance until she tells her friend that she...

The end is coming. Let me join the long line of doomsayers who wish to predict the end of the world. The end is coming. Sometime in the next five billion years the sun, which is the source of all our energy, will expand and envelop and demolish the earth. Imagine, for a moment, every...

I’m never going to hit a baseball in a perfect upward angle over the twisting head of a left fielder who takes one step just in case, to calculate the arc and the speed of that now elliptical projectile twisting over the horizon. That revolution, of my shoulders around my body, of the interlocking leather...

To the almond-eyed friends who learned to love me despite a loud voice and no sense of propriety. To the muscled walls of jeers and fists who used me as a butt of jokes and pushed me to move. To the ideals who refused to allow me to stay close and instead remained on the...

I didn’t want to hand write this to you. I wanted to call on an old phone. I wanted to board a train wearing white robes. Sleep in a flat car, rocking in meditation while we crossed the river. I wanted to switch into my best jeans and tell you twenty years in the past...

You won’t know me, at the costume party where we’ve agreed to meet. I’m hoping to be invisible to you, to add to the murder mystery. When you show, please be arrogant and beautiful, with great lines and curves. Slow down just a heartbeat when you pass me. I’ll run below your radar. It’s a...

If you give a mouse a cookie, then tonight he will eat. If he eats, then tonight he will soundly sleep. If a mouse can soundly sleep, then he can dream. If he dreams he will visit a world that he cannot see. If a mouse visits a world he cannot see, he’ll build it....

Level One thought: I want. Fulfill my want. Level Two thought: I have wants. Fulfilling one of my wants inhibits fulfillment of my other wants. My wants are in conflict. Level Three thought: You have wants. Fulfilling some of your wants is one of my wants. Level Four thought: Sometimes our wants collide. Mine restricts...

When we played jacks as children we were crashing planets into planets mimicking the birth of the cosmos acting as The Hand that might lift us. When we jumped ropes in rhymes we were intuiting string theory, leaping in and out of existence hoping we’d never slip, and trip. The swings, in short order, allowed...

In the knot of dirt below light and air a skin rips. We’re off in both directions towards the heat-core and the sun. We bear fruit in the struggle which sees nothing. Dark in the throat, in acid, intestines. Become a muscle or a bone. Meat. How sweet a second to catch light.(image)

You could compose your tome about anything, about how you wish models could achieve the shape of your wife caught from the side as she readies herself for bed, beauty without pretense. You could compose your tome about the field across the road, where one could imagine a labyrinthian park leading to a hidden lagoon....

The cells grew abnormally in patterns of wood-grains consistent with a kitchen utensil from the 70s. The first spot on the meat of a right buttock, the second across a left cheek. The cells spread to the top of the head, where arms don’t cover when a second grader cowers around a corner a teacher...

From the morning window I spot a branch on my familiar tree repainted in a cast of orange. The new buds of spring, a blurred pine tree, the back room of the house next door. All in orange. The mind tries to reconcile new data against the template, explain away with dew or dawn light. For a moment, before I...

The sunset is never the same, not two nights in a row, nor ever. This spring the grasses that grows will be siblings, not a twin. Your mother counseling you through a first broken love based on her own heartache is teaching you to drive a car she has never owned. Innovation is the only constant....

We are the outcome of an orgasm. The big bang. A series of bad decisions. Breaking and entering. A convincing fiction. Animal cruelty. Aggravated assault. Public drunkenness. Extortion. Forgery. Domestic violence. Perjury. Solicitation. Epiphany. Fraud. We come from the sea. Having won an unfathomable race. Hung around in blood. Amoeba. Virus. Anemone. Amphibian crawling up...

The earth’s core is iron-nickel spinning inside tightly wrapped coils throwing off a magnetic field. Prick my paper-thin skin and lava-blood rises up to fill it in. Call them mountains. Call them islands. Call them cliffs. The ocean out and in while a diver times his entrance. My core is iron-nickel. It’s in the center....

The temperature in the reactor is a hundred and eighteen degrees, Precise calculations based on mountains of theory had led us to know the unequivocal optimum for fuel-burning efficiancy. At that temperature an engineer can survive for an hour before they require time-off for relief. Forget your next question about a cost/benefit analysis. Forget your...

Every time scientists come close to recreating the first line of the universe something else breaks. Each of his three wives with the same middle name. As soon as they discover dark matter they find out it’s not that dark. The definition of dark matters change. All those people with alliterative, instructive, character defining names....